1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a vehicle lamp comprising a plurality of lamp chambers respectively having light sources, particularly to a headlight structure with reflecting member for changing directions of light beams.
2. Description of the Related Art
There are known vehicle lamps fixing in front of automotive vehicles and having low- and high-beam functions of emitting light forward from the vehicle, turnsignal functions of indicating right and left turns and clearance functions of informing vehicle width likewise. The vehicle lamp is a so-called a headlight and supplied with a low-beam lamp chamber portion, a high-beam lamp chamber portion, a turnsignal lamp chamber portion and a clearance lamp chamber portion which are independently provided. Each lamp chamber portion has a light source, a casing for reflecting a light emitted from the light source, and a lens portion for forming a lamp chamber section together with the casing. The casing is formed with an open front portion, a convex rear portion and the opening of the casing is substantially closed with the lens portion. The lamp chamber portion is so arranged that these portions are prevented from optically interfering with each other, that a sufficient luminous area is secured for each of them and that these portions are also prevented from overlapping each other as seen from the front side of the vehicle.
Moreover, such a vehicle lamp employs an electric bulb as a light source. In case that the bulb is directly visible from the outside of the vehicle, it does not have good external appearance. Therefore, a shade as a shielding member for covering each bulb is disposed within the lamp chamber of the vehicle lamp. In other words, the bulb is not visible by pedestrians because the bulb in the vehicle lamp is covered with the shielding member, so that a good external appearance is obtained.
However, as the lamp chamber is so arranged that the light emitting (longitudinal) direction is prevented from overlapping each other, there develops a problem arising from causing the vehicle lamp as a whole to become large. Consequently, the projection area of the vehicle increases as the projection area in the light emitting direction also increases, without saying that the design freedom of the vehicle is limited, which results in making it inconvenient designing the vehicle from an aerodynamic standpoint. Further, because a portion corresponding to the shielding member in the lens portion does not function sufficiently as a luminous portion, the light emitting efficiency lowers and the problem is that the whole lens portion is not effectively used.